The role of the Governor was offered to José Luis López Vázquez, but when he couldn't do it and with little time to start shooting, the director José Luis Borau casted himself, by insistence of co-writer Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón.
The character that Lola Gaos played in Tristana (1970), named Saturna, made Borau and Gutiérrez Aragón think of Goya's painting "Saturn devouring his children." Hence the dominant, even castrating, character of Martina towards Ángel.